


The Wish

by cat_77



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Season/Series Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22339297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: All of the legends are true, but what if you were only told part of the legend?  A little research may unlock the full potential of the myths and maybe just make things right again.Post-Series Fix-It
Relationships: Clary Fray/Jace Wayland, Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 53





	The Wish

Alec was suspicious when Jace called a team meeting. They hadn’t been a team for a while now, technically, what with the split between New York and Idris, not to mention the split between Nephilim that knew what they were and those who did not. He was even more suspicious when the location chosen to have this meeting was decidedly somewhere not under the watchful eye of the Clave. No cameras and no bugs as far as anyone could tell, so clandestine was the name of the game. The fact he hadn’t included the head of security for the Institute was also a telling thing. Almost as telling as the fact he did include Magnus.

“So, I read, like a lot,” Jace began after a lot of stalling via means of fidgeting with anything and everything he could get his hands on until Magnus had physically taken them away. He had called the others together with a strange sort of hopefulness that was nearly a tangible thing between their bond, possibly the first hint of that particular emotion from him in ages. It was almost worrying given the sheer lack of it for so long.

“And…?” Alec prompted. He hadn’t thought his surrogate brother could draw things out much longer without anything to play with but he was apparently wrong. A sense of doubt began to creep through now, though it was hard to tell if it was doubt in himself or doubt that the others would believe whatever it was that he would hopefully get around to saying.

“And with your new position as Inquisitor and apparently the family name of Herondale, a lot of doors to a lot of books have opened to me in the last few months,” Jace continued. It made a sort of sense, he supposed, that others would be willing to cut some slack to the parabatai to the Inquisitor, the last of one of the great families, a soldier that had lost far too much in recent times. Though Alec did have to question how much any of that played a role versus Jace simply barging into the Archives like he deserved to be there and setting up shop for hours if not days at a time.

This time it was Izzy who motioned with her hand and made the prompting noise. “Jace, I can’t leave the Institute alone that long, not with Raj supposedly stopping by. He’ll either challenge me or rob the place, or possibly both,” she reminded him. Alec resisted the urge to smirk at her outburst knowing she had left Underhill in charge in her stead. The man was dreadfully loyal to the Lightwoods and to the rule of law, enough so to question why he was being left out of this little miniature enclave.

Jace took a deep breath before he finally blurted, “Nowhere in the original stories, not a single scroll or the oldest book of Shadowhunter lore does it say there’s only one wish.” He held up a hand when he was met with a mixture of doubts and profanity, and continued, “The Sword, the Cup, the Mirror, all of these are mentioned as ways of summoning Raziel. The original texts stated such a summoning should be rare and made only when absolutely necessary. That the Angel himself would deem whether a request was worthy or not. The blood of the Nephilim making the request could be used for persuasion to their cause and that blood should be split no more than once, but even that wasn’t deemed necessary if the Angel agreed with the original request. There was stuff about not wasting his time and the more often you’d do it the less likely he would be to help, but absolutely nothing says that he would help his people once and only once.”

Alec wiped a hand over his face, not sure what emotion he felt at the moment other than resigned. “You want to summon the Angel to try to get Clary her memories back,” he guessed. “Never mind that he’s the one that took them away?”

“I don’t think he took them, not exactly,” Jace protested. With a lack of anything else to fidget with, he ran a hand through his hair before he continued, “Just think about it: He granted her wish to bring me back because she had put her people and the fate of the Downworld over her family. Everything that happened after that – Lilith, the Owl, Johnathan’s resurrection – all of that can be tied back to that one action. He granted it, so why would he punish her for dealing with the consequences? Not to mention, her gift of making runes wasn’t even from him, but from the blood she shared with Ithuriel, which is shared with me too. Is he going to take my abilities away if I use them to help others? Something seems off here.”

“You think the Angel made a mistake. He’s the Angel, he doesn’t make mistakes,” Izzy argued.

“He is fallible. All life is fallible. That’s what makes us, well, us,” Jace argued back. “He granted her wish and told her there would be consequences. She, and we, dealt with those consequences. Taking away something he never gave her in the first place shouldn’t be yet another consequence she needs to deal with. Not to mention her letter never said she spoke to him directly. There were demons everywhere at the time, maybe one of them pulled this with her? Take out the annoyance that kept standing in their way again and again?”

Now it was Alec’s turn to hold up his hand. “There are far too many things going on here,” he started. He then used that hand to start numbering them off. “The wish was used to bring you back. That there may be more than one wish. That the Angel granted Clary hers knowing there’d be an aftermath. That Clary was granted gifts by someone other than the Angel we as Shadowhunters are taught to revere. That Clary was punished for using those gifts by what we think is Raziel but might be someone else? Anything else? Because I’m out of fingers.”

“ Ithuriel protected her. We saved him and he was grateful, but he protected her, right up until it cost him his life. What if, without that protection, another power punished her?” Jace asked.

It wasn’t Alec, but Izzy who spoke next. “Clary’s gift was the creation of Runes as not seen by the Gray Book. Runes are the language of the Angels. They give us our powers and abilities, yes, but what if we could have more but simply don’t know them all yet?”

“You’ve been working off of the King James’ edition instead of the original texts,” Magnus guessed. He had stayed quiet up until this point, but was more than slightly intrigued now. He motioned to Jace and requested, “Show me your research. It will look less suspicious since Alexander and I reside in Idris versus bringing it to your sister to review.”

“And if I’m right?” Jace asked.

Magnus made a face that Alec couldn’t quite place before he answered, “Then you have a summoning to attend to that very few have ever completed successfully. Also, we might need to erase your memories both of determining this and as to any and all evidence of what this will take lest far too many Nephilim get far too power hungry and determine this is the best way to see to their needs. Your research implied not to abuse the power to request a meeting, best not let others do so even if you are smart enough to avoid it.”

“But… I can try? You’ll help me get what I need?”

Alec bit his lip. There were very few things that he could ever deny his parabatai, and hope was definitely one of them. It would be easy enough to have the right pieces in the right places at the right times, especially given his current position. Add Magnus and Izzy to the mix and it was a done deal. 

If the facts supported it. 

He would look over the research himself, beyond what Jace and Magnus determined, and then and only then would he give any sort of approval for what could madness, sacrilege, or maybe something they all needed. Even he knew how much Clary had done for both the Downworld and the Nephilim and, thanks to some carefully placed contacts that may or may not also make sure necessary funding happened to and would remain in place for as long as required, he also knew just how much she had given up. 

He also knew just how much of a life she was creating for herself. One free from the risks of being a Shadowhunter, even if those who shared her original calling had to beat down some riffraff stupid enough to try to come after her from time to time. He might have, and still occasionally did, find her annoying, but he also respected how much of a debt was owed to her and was not going to let any harm come to her on his watch. Even if that harm was his own parabatai wanting to drag her back where she had just broken free from. If this was Clary’s choice, they would abide by it. If some other factor was at play, they would take that factor out of the picture.

Jace’s research proved incredibly compelling, mainly because he really wasn’t as dumb as he liked to pretend. One couldn’t be that stupid and still be a great strategist in the middle of a battle with demons coming at him from all angles. He might have no clue on little things like common niceties or other such nonsense, but give him data and he could drag it to the right conclusions. 

Alec agreed with the findings of what the few surviving original texts that were usually locked away implied. The Angel could be summoned for consult as needed, and that requests could be made during those consultations, usually for aid. If the Angel did not initially agree with those requests, a deal could be made wherein that requestor offered their blood, a part of themselves, in exchange for a wish being granted. It was, in essence, a blood pact in all the senses. It would allow the Angel to call upon the requestor as needed and bound the requestor to complete any task presented to them. Somehow, through the ages, this had been watered down to the Nephilim as a whole summoning him only once and making a request only once. Historical linguistics was not his strong suit, but bureaucratic BS was a skill he had developed, more so recently. He could damn near trace the political mechanizations that played out that slowly took the power away from the individual Nephilim and the equivalent of their clans and placed it into the hands of the ruling body now known as the Clave.

This meant that there was about to be a lot of moving parts. Parts that actually worked the way they were supposed to for a change. A few glamours, a few slight of hands, a few half-fey Shadowhunters swearing they were requested to bring something to the New York Institute and everyone believing the assertion that the fey portion meant she couldn’t lie… all of these meant the Soul Sword got to Izzy to give it to Jace to meet up with Alec at Lake Lynn while he just happened to hold the Mortal Cup in his hands despite the one being on display for all who wanted to see it… in a temporarily locked down chamber where see and touch were two drastically different things. He might have Aline to thank for that, actually, as word spread to the Consul that there was someone trying to get their hands on it and they had best make sure it didn’t happen.

Regardless, he now stood at the edge of the icy waters, his own hand aching in sympathy to the slice his parabatai had just made to his own despite the fact they had pretty much proven such a sacrifice wasn’t immediately needed. Then again, Jace never was one to do things by half. They would need to dry and maybe oil certain bits of metal later, but all of that was pushed aside as a bright and powerful Angel rose high above them, thankfully in the daylight and with Magnus providing as much cover as he could from afar.

The information obtained was, well, not completely enlightening, but interesting to say the least. 

Nephilim would one day evolve enough to master more of the language of the angels, but it damaged them to do so now. Their abilities would grow and change as they evolved in preparation of this as well. Ithuriel’s blood had sped up that process, and he had allowed it in gratitude to Clary and Jace for saving him from Valentine. Some were yet too powerful for even her though, and would need to be guarded while others she could use freely. Her sunlight rune was hers, as was her portal and even her wings though he warned against using that one too often as it took much effort and could permanently harm her.

“But she was punished for using that one?” Jace questioned, and Alec kind of wanted to slap him for it.

“Not by my word,” Raziel confirmed. “Find that which has silenced her voice. Find that which has obscured the Marks of our words upon her. Then, should she so choose, Clarissa Morgenstern can safely return to serve us once more.”

The Angel departed at that, leaving the two men behind to question if he had technically granted the wish Jace had requested, or technically gave them something far better in an understanding of how things they were never told to question worked.

It took more time, months’ worth, for them to track down just who had set everything in motion. Loyal to Johnathan and Valentine before him, they had hoped to scare Clary away from risking that much of herself, clearly not understanding how frustratingly stubborn the redhead could be once she set her mind to something. The journey there involved unraveling conspiracies within the Nephilim themselves, ties to greed and the quest for power – whether that power be from light or dark – and a handful of banishings and people being stripped of their runes the way Clary was hers, only their version was a little less willingly and a lot more painful. Also, hers weren’t actually stripped, only glamoured in a way so powerful that she could neither see nor feel them, and no one gazing in had a chance to do so without some serious counter spells.

Throughout it all, he kept watch on the little troublemaker, and Clary too. Which meant he knew precisely when a certain artist would be presenting her work and precisely when to send Jace to check up on her via the less than subtle rotation they had set up. The way he felt a heart other than his own soar through their bond told him an unspoken wish of his own had been granted after all. 

The road back wasn’t smooth and easy, nor had any of them expected it to be. Clary still had gaps where she knew she should know things, but the rune in question simply would not come to her. She was hesitant to use others as well, the fear of retribution one of the things that remained as stubborn as she herself usually had been. The night that he rushed to New York after he heard the Institute was under attack and found only a rapidly fading blinding light, some awe-struck trainees, and a lot of dusted demons, he had the feeling things were going to be okay.


End file.
